A MAN who pick-pocketed 25 mobile phones and a digital camera at a Hexagon gig before making up a “fairy tale” about finding them on the floor faces deportation.

Slimane Aouchicue was given with a 12-month prison sentence after being convicted of the thefts at Reading Magistrates’ Court last Thursday.

Judge Terry English also put in a recommendation to the Home Secretary that Aouchicue be considered for deportation to Algeria, which he left in 2003.

Aouchicue, 26, from Barrington Road, Brixton, stole the items from revellers at a Bloc Party gig at The Hexagon on February 5, this year.

The court heard how gig-goer Simon Martin and a friend confronted the defendant at the venue after noticing their phones had gone missing.

Mr Martin told the court he and his friend “weren’t being unfriendly in any sense” as they approached Aouchicue and asked him to turn out his pockets.

But as the two men spoke to the defendant he bolted for the nearest exit, the court heard.

Having managed to restrain Aouchicue, the two friends allowed security staff to step in and wrestle the defendant to the floor.

Security guard Anthony Lewcock told the court he needed back up to restrain Aouchicue who was spitting and struggling to get away.

Staff at The Hexagon called police after finding 12 mobile phones in one of the defendant’s coat pockets and a further 13 in other pockets.

Joseph Templeton, prosecuting, told to the court Aouchicue had previously been given a 12-month community order for stealing 31 mobile phones at a gig in Earl’s Court in April 2006.

Speaking through an interpreter about the incident in Reading, the defendant said he had drunk half a bottle of Bacardi and two pints of beer on the night.

He said he had found the phones as he searched for his own missing mobile. He said: “I looked on the floor and saw the lights of the mobiles. When I saw it’s not mine I asked the people around me if anyone lost this. Some said no they hadn’t so I just put it in my pocket.”

In sentencing Aouchicue to 12 months in prison, of which he is likely to serve six, Judge English said: “I don’t know whether they have a similar saying in Algeria to the one we have here when somebody tells the most unlikely of stories.

“We often react by saying, ‘I wasn’t born yesterday’, and that’s exactly what I consider he’s trying on me. It defies any sort of explanation that he came by these phones in the way that he says.”

He added: “I believe I have sat here this afternoon hearing one big fairy tale.

“His lies are matched only by his thieving and I don’t have a second’s hesitation in accepting the evidence. Even if I hadn’t been told about the other 31 phones – even without that – I would still have found him guilty.”

Mr English said he would recommend Aouchicue be deported by the Home Secretary and told the defendant he would be detained until that decision had been made.